I am going to be a guest this Friday, 02/23/24 at 8PM EST, for the American Council of the Blind’s Audio Description Project Community Call on The Oscars! Tune in and hear me and three other panelists discuss this years Oscar nominees and so we think will win, as well as the audio description. You can join and listen in by either downloading the ACB Media app, and tuning in to Channel 6 at the scheduled time, or you can ask Alexa to “Open ACB Media”, where she then will ask you to choose a channel from 1-10, and you would say “ACB Media Channel 6”. It would be a passive listen for any of you, and I would have no idea if you did or did not attend. But, thanks anyway for thinking about it!
Now onto audio description. Boy Swallows the Universe (Netflix) is a show that has grown on me with every episode. Five episodes in and I’m glad I stuck with it. The first episode didn’t really hook me, but it is a very different show, and the audio description is solid, so I’m happy with this.
Mr and Mrs Smith (Amazon) as of episode 3 seems to want to add a little more comedy with each episode, so now I understand the comedic angle of the show. I wasn’t quite sure after the first episode, but there’s way more straight forward comedy in Episode 3, involving farts and dicks. Ingir Tutor’s audio description from the Media Access group is still solid, especially as the series grows and we learn more about John and Jane.
Tracker (Paramount Plus) jumped into cults in the second episode. I think this is a good use of Justin Hartley, and one of the best new shows CBS has produced in years. Most of their shows are just franchise spinoffs. This feels totally different, and I like it. The audio description, which I believe is Andrew Thatcher, also from The Media Access Group is excellent. He’s fresh off of Lawman, which in my opinion was one of the top 10 TV shows audio described last year. Not in terms of the quality of the show, though the show is good, but the actual audio description was top 10.
I also started the fourth season of The Equalizer (Paramount Plus), which is also Ingir Tutor, and I really needed that recap. This new CIA director is clearly bad. I like my bad guys to be less obvious. It’s like the new guy on Halo. One of the reasons I loved Silo last year was that there was an actual feel of surprise when a bad guy was revealed. Now, it seems like these shows are choosing really obvious actors for these roles. There’s way more to be celebrated in a nuanced performance, than a stereotypical one.
I also watched an episode of Friends (MAX), which has audio description. For a sitcom, it actually has pretty good audio description. I don’t think I really appreciated solid sitcom description until ABC went and made awful audio description for the new seasons of Abbott Elementary and Not Dead Yet. It’s making me appreciate the work people have put and are putting into similar shows.
